Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Ships Of The Rense pt 2: The Siren / Harpy Escort

SeerK here to kick off the new look for
the blog. The Waygate is official and will be bringing you coverage of Firestorm Armada, Planetfall, War Machine and Hordes and any of
the other war games the authors currently play. We will be
continuing with hobby and strategy articles as well and a little
something new I like to call “Fluff Fridays”, where I begin to
expand the Firestorm Armada universe for some narrative play and give
a little background to our impending Firestorm Armada campaign.

Before all that though, I am continuing
a series I started almost 2 months ago. The Ships of the Rense Navy.
We continue by finishing off the Rense System Navy Tier 3 ships and
starting with our Tier 2 ships. Last time we went over the
Bulwark/Hellion Frigate. The workhorse of the fleet and vigilant
guardians of Dramos. Today we are going to talk about the the all
seeing eyes of the Federation. The watchers of watchers. The
Siren/Harpy Escort. We then move into Tier two with the backbone of
the Rense Navy, the Spook/Shrike Cruiser.

The Siren/Harpy is the only Rense Navy
Escort available to the fleet. It is also usable by other members of
the Zenian League. The crews assigned to the Siren are assigned the
task of protecting their parent vessels from harm from within as well
as without. Shooting down torpedoes with the same skill and
precision as rooting out a potential traitor to the Federation.

The main function of the siren is to
protect the vessel it is assigned to. With a point defense rating of
3 just one of these vessels can really enhance your flagships ability
to shoot down torpedoes. The feature that makes it attractive for
use for other fleets in the League is that it also has the Target
Acquisition MAR. By making a successful command check you can give
the parent vessel a +1 to hit with one of its weapon systems. The
farther away the target is the more successes you need in your
command check. You need an additional success for every full 8 inches
the target is away from the firing vessel.

Additional sirens can assist the
first, lowering the amount of successes you need by 1 per vessel.
This can make it difficult at long range, but not impossible,
especially with a Rense Navy ship or any ship with the Elite Crew
MAR. Elite Crew makes it so command checks are passed on a 3+ rather
than 4+.

The Target Resolution MAR makes the
Siren really attractive to Dindrenzi Field Marshals. This is
especially true when you have “The Eye Of Rense” tactical card in
your hand. Automatically passing command checks in a turn when you
have Sirens doing target calculations for your Nausicaa Battleship or
even your Retribution Dreadnought really can help strike some fear
into those Terran Dogs.

I personally like to run as many Sirens
as I can with my Spectres Battleships and Banshee Dreadnought. Three
is ideal as I am adding 9 point defense dice and making it so I can
use Target Resolution on 3 different weapon systems if I so choose.
It also ensures I get to use them as they tend to become targets
pretty quickly once my opponent realizes what they do. Fleets that
rely on torpedo cruisers and frigates will single out point defenses
and vessels that help in point defense if they are smart. Hitting
ships that are primarily reliant on other types of weapons should be
hit first, thus rendering the torpedo based ships impotent.

Positioning your escorts is pretty
important. You want to make sure they are withing command range to
contribute their point defense against torps. Position is especially
important when dealing with SRS tokens aka Bombers, Fighters and
Assault Boats. You should be mindful of your opponents ships that
carry Bombers and other small craft. Whether they are in play or
docked you need to make sure your escorts are positioned in such a
way that they may make point defense attacks on any token they may be
sent on an attack run. For example, if a Terran Carrier is
positioned off your port your escorts should reposition themselves to
the port side of the parent vessel and close enough to be within 4
inches of any point on the parent ships base. You can also screen
your larger ships with the escorts in this way against attack runs.
Making it so the Escorts are the only viable targets. Firestorm
Armada is a game that can be won or lost in the movement phase.

Well there you have it. The
Siren/Harpy. Next time we crack into Tier 2 vessels. The
Spook/Shrike is a lethal cruiser with dual roles in the Rense Navy.
More on this versatile ship next time.

3 comments:

I haven't had the opportunity to utilize the Siren Escorts yet. My experiments with the Rense System Navy is just beginning and at the moment, I have my attentions turned to the Cerberus Heavy Cruisers. Some day I will get back to the Sirens, as they are a significant buff unit for their parent vessel.

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